I don't like the number 26!

The last couple of weeks have flown on by. I had a birthday, which is always weird. I don't like the number 26! I decided to stay in my site for my birthday because I had been away for several weekends and I knew that I would be traveling the next weekend as well. Luckily, two of my friends came to Cochán to help me celebrate my birthday, campo style. Coming to Cochán isn't easy and my friends rode milk trucks and trekked in the rain for 2 hours to come! Birthdays really aren't a big deal in the campo UNLESS you decide to throw your own birthday party. This involves spending a ton of money on a fiesta, buying booze, and dancing until the sun comes out. This is not my idea of fun, so I opted not to do anything. Plus, if I had planned a party it would have been hard to decide who to invite without offending anyone, and throwing a party for the whole town was out of my budget. Instead it was a very low-key birthday where we made real chocolate chip cookies and pizza. I was greedy and didn't share too many of my cookies with my family, but to be fair, they didn't even acknowledge that it was my birthday even though they knew that's why my friends were visiting!

I have also been very anxious to start working more. Lately I've been going to the colegio and playing with whatever class doesn't have a teacher. I was suprised at how many classes still don't have teachers, even though school has been in session for 2 months now! I had to rack my brain and resources to come up with a lot of games to teach them. Now they think that I am just full of games, which I am, but not the kind of games that they want to play. I have found that many of the kids don't like to listen if something is even remotely complicated, and as a result, it takes forever for them to learn a new game. My broken spanish and horrible accent probably doesn't help. While I can talk to people easily one on one, it is MUCH more difficult to talk to a large group of 20-30 kids. The school schedule should finally be set in the coming week, but unfortunately it seems that I will be traveling a lot in the next couple of months. When it was raining and I had nothing to do, I also didn't have to travel much. Now that I have work to do and I want to be in my site more, I will be traveling a lot. Go figure.

I spent an entire afternoon trying to take a picture of this piggy. All of her siblings died and her mom is greedy and doesn't let her eat. The only time the mom stays put for her to eat is when she is eating herself.

I put up WAY too many photos of the scenery, but if you lived here you would too. There isn't much else to do!

Cows, cows, and more cows!

I now have the world's nicest woodburning kitchen. My family put in a gigantic cocina mejorada last year and last week they replaced the dirt floor with TILE, built countertops, and painted the smokey walls. I really wish I had a good before picture so you could appreciate the difference.

Playing games in the colegio with the second grade. After a few days of games and running around, I was extremely sore! That was probably the most exercise that I've done since arriving in site.

Playing a version of red light/green light with the 5th grade in the colegio. The recess bell rang so the entire school came out to watch.